Cancer Great of Modern Civilisation

No words of mine are needed to bring to light the tragedy of cancer. Almost every living man, woman or child in the world today has lost relative or friend in the fires, of its torments and destruction. Wars, famines, floods come and go, reaping a harvest of human mortality, but the destructive fires of this malignant disease go on unabated from decade to decade. Many greater pens than mine have detailed its destruction. No war in history has destroyed what cancer has destroyed in the last two decades alone. The toll of human torment, destruction and misery cannot be computed. Men and women and children cry to God for knowledge to stem this awful scourge. Men bereft of wives; wives of husbands, children left fatherless and motherless, friendships broken, the rewards of life’s endeavours snatched away, an ever increasing trail of human torment, is the material symbolism of man’s ignorance ignorance of the cause and ignorance of the cure of this malignant instrument of death. If the tears of those who have lost, and the groans of those who have suffered could be recorded, a greater flood than any known to man, a greater noise than man could estimate would rise upon the earth.

And against this destroyer of all that man holds dear there can be only one safeguard knowledge of its cause. Ignorance of this makes all attempts to combat the scourge like the efforts of a man to protect himself against an enemy in the dark. Ignorance of the originating cause prevents all efforts to counter the next attack. Although all the ingenuity of man’s intellect and his five senses is brought to bear to stave off the destruction from the primary cancer assault, the primary growth, destruction must be inevitable because ignorance of the cause has in the past prevented any precautions being taken to stave off future attacks as secondary or metastatic growth in the vital structures of the human body. To protect the breast and leave the brain, heart, lung, liver, etc., open to cancer growth destruction must always be futile, and this thrust at the vitals has no safeguard if the cause of cancer growth remains beyond human knowledge. Only where this curtain of ignorance is torn aside by knowledge, and its power, can defeat be prevented and cancer as the burning destroyer of civilization be overcome and its tragedy of the past become an appalling memory of devastation on the page of history. That page can only be closed by knowledge, that knowledge can only come to mankind through one man alone, just as the laying of each stepping stone in the progress of all human endeavour has been due to one man alone, although the fashioning may be and has been due to many men. The knowledge which has quarried, carried, fashioned and made ready the foundation stone of any edifice for the benefit of mankind has been that of many and various types of men, but the foundation stone which symbolizes the completion Of all these efforts bears only one man’s name that of the man who places the foundation in its final place. To him is given the credit, mankind reads his_name on the finished article, but without those who worked on it from its origin to its final stages of preparation to symbolize an edifice of man’s accomplishment, the final effort of bringing it to light could never have been made.

Every man who has quarried into the hidden mysteries of the cancer question to help produce the foundation stone of knowledge upon which the edifice for the protection of all mankind has been raised, deserves the grateful thanks of humanity. The man who finally lays the fashioned stone before the eyes of the world the man who draws aside the wrapping which has hidden the truth from man’s gaze his name emblazons the pages of history, but his part must be small to that of others who have prepared the knowledge for his unwrapping. Little by Cancer the Greatest Scourge of Civilization 17 little, in this country and in that, human effort by all types and manners of men, have quarried in the hidden depths of the cancer question and fashioned with zeal and energy the ever upward rising product knowledge, until finally it has reached above the shadows of ignorance to the light of human understanding for all men to see, and seeing understand and understanding take another step on the road of human history, the path of progress the avenue planted with the productive trees of human wisdom, changing the jungle with all its dangers to the straight but narrow path, paved by the stones of human endeavour and lined by the trees of human wisdom. This avenue from year to year grows longer and man’s pathway becomes safer and safer, but always there remains the untrodden pathway in front, a jungle which human endeavour must pave and whose borders must be lined by the progressive planting of the trees of lucid unfolding of universal wisdom to the searching, seeking, asking of future mankind. No man can define the future, no man can see the completed road, no man can visualize the end of the pathway of human endeavour, but all men must realize that the path still unpaved must be paved by human endeavour and the jungle of ignorance kept out by the budding growths of human wisdom. The pathway of human progress has been beset by many destroyers many have been swept aside, but cancer, the greatest of all man’s foes has reared its destructive flames consuming many of the builders of the path of progress, until today, mankind has come to the point at which destruction of all his forward progress appears but a matter of a little time, by the flames of the cancer scourge. Man must conquer cancer or man with the civilization he has built up must perish not by the wars of man’s own making which can last only a limited time, but by the devastating flames of the cancer scourge which all the endeavours of man in the past have battled in vain. The tree of knowledge of the cause of cancer must be planted, watered and brought to fruition for all mankind to partake of and live.

What avails the power of the mind and all the senses, and the material symbols of this power if through ignorance man is to be destroyed by the fiery blight of the cancer scourge?.

The voice which has thrilled the multitude, the eye which has visioned, and the hand which has fashioned the wonders of civilization from the jungle and the inanimate products of creation have been destroyed, the earth has opened its gaping cold jaws to receive the bodies of mankind from which ignorance has driven out the spark of life. When ignorance is itself cast out the spark of life remains. The power of creative wisdom all loving and all protective, will overcome all the forces of destruction. When man attains this wisdom, he will have attained his goal. The greatest obstacle held in the progress of man today is cancer a devastating scourge, this must be removed before man can progress further. Until knowledge wipes out this barrier, ignorance sits enthroned.